Mike Fratto and NetworkComputing does a great job explaining the impact of Private Clouds on your career path:

The problem:

Change control rules the roost, and planned recovery procedures are required for every change. Cowboy IT isn’t allowed. The result is that IT operations are mostly manual, and any functions that are automated are tightly controlled with a skilled operator at the helm in case something goes awry. It’s how the company has always done it, and it works.

Ad then Mike hits the but of the problem for some/many people:

Bob is also dealing with operations staff members who feel like they’re automating themselves out of jobs. The press is replete with stories about large Internet behemoths like Facebook, Microsoft and Google who run hundreds or even thousands of servers with just a single admin. That means fewer IT jobs. No one wants to automate himself out of a job and, frankly, staff members aren’t likely to tell management about their fears. But it’s a problem you need to address head on.

My view is that the there is a whole new career waiting for you. If you don’t take it, it will be taken away.

In this blog post, Frank Brockners ( part of the Get Your Build On team) gives a detailed and interesting look into Cisco’s SDN strategy and, specifically, provides some insights into the way that Cisco visualises OnePK as fitting into the market.

Although I’ve talked a lot about Cisco’s SDN strategy I think this blog post sums up a lot of key points. Let me attempt to summarise them:

1. Networks are inherently physically distributed. Data Centre Networks aren’t but they are only one part of networking, there is still service providers, corporate WANs and others that need and want SDN type control and management. How do we provide solutions that address all of networking ?

That said many of today’s network deployments are not that random, e.g. data center networks are often built using very few types of network elements and have a very regular and stable network topology. Would this allow us to re-consider our control plane architecture? Could we centralize parts of the forwarding control so we can adapt more easily to specific needs of a business or application?

2. There is value in distributed networking protocols of today because they act consistently and predictably. They have been proven over time to control loops and real life conditions.

For who might still believe in full centralization, consider how difficult it is to debug the situation where “Routing” and “Forwarding” tables of a router become out of synch.

3. There might be value in the both centralised and distributed approaches. Some networks might needs specific solutions that suit and SDN might not be right for everyone.

whether there is a need to run a custom control algorithm

the ability to centrally access sources of information which are not easily accessible through one of today’s network protocols

the expected performance and scale of the solution; how quickly can we respond to network events, and what is the event frequency

the need to handle multiple concurrent failures

Frank closes the article with this key point:

It is possible to build upon a network running a fully distributed routing protocol such as OSPF. On top this OSPF network, we could leverage a logically centralized routing application which reviews the link state database as computed by OSPF, and then computes and injects higher priority (least dollar cost or lowest delay) routes.

And that is the (current) core of Cisco’s SDN strategy. To leverage existing protocols because they work and then layer SDN over the top of those systems. This means a fallback to our known and understood networking protocols while we make sense of how to utilise SDN in the future.

The EtherealMind View

At the moment, the future of SDN in the market is unclear. There are obviously point solutions in the data centre as Nicira showed recently but in terms of the overall network market outside of that market SDN is very unclear.

You can take the view that Cisco doesn’t seem to know or comprehend how to implement SDN (as I sometimes do). Or that they are protecting their market position by using existing technologies and hardware (as Stacey at Gigaom seems to).

Today I take the view, somewhat convincingly, that customers want the best of both worlds. The value of SDN in terms of control and operational efficiency and, at the same time, the reliability and predictability of current networks. CIO’s don’t want to be told to replace everything and start again – that’s would be unpopular, impractical and damaging to vendor brands.

SDN needs to find a niche and prove itself as useful and reliable.

Disclosure

Cisco sponsored the Packet Pushers to attend Cisco Live and record a number of podcasts as a commercial project which are publicly available at http://packetpushers.net. I also received briefings, met with executives etc etc. I didn’t get any t-shirts. Or anything else for that matter. My opinions are my own.

Brent Salisbury has great blog about his experiences using SDN and OpenFlow at a University. He wrote this post about the power of Community:

The software development world wrote the book on community. The networking industry has typically been fragmented into islands with interactions being determined by vendor orchestrations. The leadership these folks are sowing often at the expense of time with family and self-interests, is not driven from monetary gain or or ego but to foster the community ideology that has been lacking at times in this industry. As we begin exploring the need for pragmatic evolution of the networks we design, build and operate this sense of community, that has been thriving in other verticals of computing will be vital to ensure the best path is followed.

If I could be so presumptuous, one of most important motivations for me to invest time and energy into writing and podcasting is to share experiences and knowledge in the hope that other people will do the same. Data Networking desperately needs a Enterprise community to build strong discussion on their IT Infrastructure. Networking is the platform of which all IT Infrastructure stands and we need to make our voices heard.

In this blog post, Dan Hershey (from Big Switch) gets some toys from the lab and shows how to build an SDN Controller application that uses OpenFlow. This application uses a Pronto switch as an “active patch panel” to connect two Cisco switches together.

Things to think about:

You can use OpenFlow to do things that traditional switches cannot do. Who doesn’t want an active patching system in their remote lab setup ? (I’ll bet there are some training companies who could use this feature immediately).

Dan has included the problems with bugs in the firmware. He hasn’t hidden away from the realities.

Not only does he configure the Floodlight controller using the CLI, he has developed an iPhone app to remotely configure his patch panel. That’s badass.

This is a great demonstration of what can be achieved using OpenFlow with simple tools that are available to today. Go and read this and be inspired by what new technology could do for your network.